I’d like to have a discussion about this because there’s a show in my area (in this case a popular musical) I want to see that’s going on general sale tomorrow at 10 am. The venue it’s happening in hosts a lot of popular events and has done really well since its opening.
I detest TicketBa$tard and will not use them. Presales pretty much always happen via that avenue. I’ve looked at the seats left during the current presale for this show, though, and it’s showing only single seats left for all performances of this event.
I suspect, however, that tickets are still being held for that final sale to the general public. I could be wrong though because I really don’t know how these things work. I just know that a few years back, when another (even more popular) musical came to town, I was able to get decent tickets even after waiting in line for 2 hours on the general sale day. The run of that show was two weeks, however, while the one I want now is only one week, and the venue has done really well in the interim with season ticket sales, meaning there really are less tickets available for general sales. I don’t know if this matters.
So I am pondering: If I go to the actual venue tomorrow when the general sale starts, can I expect to at least get two seats together? Or am I wasting my time? Since the box office is not far from my home, I’ll probably give it a shot just to see, but if there’s anyone here who has experience/inside info on this racket, I’d love to hear it. While I certainly understand giving season ticket holders first dibs, all this other gaming (presale, etc.) really annoys me.
All the pre-sale, general sales, and other “exclusive tickets” seems like a scam to me. For every event I’ve attended in the past few years (sporting, concert, shows), I just buy the best seats I can afford on Stubhub. Is your venue on there?
I can’t tell you about pre-sale versus general sales, but going directly to the venue’s ticket office to buy tickets is the smartest (and cheapest) way, if it’s convenient enough for you. I try to avoid the online sellers when possible as well.
On the other hand, if the venue has lots of events that you are interested in attending, why not just buy a season ticket package? That would get you into the pre-pre-sales most likely (usually a week ahead of anyone else), and might even have an option to order all seats for all shows over the entire season at once (like baseball season tickets). Our local community theater (theatre!) sells packages with six tickets, for example, but they let you use as many as you want for any particular show. It also might entice you to attend shows that you’d otherwise skip, which might be a show you wouldn’t normally think of attending.
My one experience was my mother wanting me to buy her Pink tickets through the AmEx preorder period. I bought her tickets and then decided to buy another pair to resell. Since I now had money in the game, I started watching the seat map and noticed that a lot of seats opened up when it went to general sales. My guess is that they have a block of presale seats (scattered about so you can still buy different seating tiers) but not exclusively the “best” seats.
As luck would have it, my tickets sold on the third party site before the general tickets went on sale; probably to someone else who assumed all the good seats would be gone via presale.
I’ll again give the caveat that this was one experience at one venue for one show.
Well, I just checked the venue site again now that the general sale is on, and while the tickets available are indeed different - you can actually buy two or three seats together now, whereas the presale was only offering single tickets - it is really slim pickings. All that’s left are some student tickets and a few seats with obstructed views. So I think I am going to pass.
There are indeed tickets on StubHub already, but just like TicketBa$tard, there are fees and the tickets themselves are expensive enough already. I always go to the venue to buy; I haven’t given TicketBa$tard money in years. In this case though I may wait until the last minute and if there’s anything left on StubHub and the price is right I’ll buy then.
Sorry to hear you struck out on getting tickets. You might want to also check TickPick if looking for second-hand tickets; I’ve gotten better deals through them before than on StubHub. If the event isn’t for a while, it could be worth making an account now just because on rare occasions they’ve had sales (I bought Hamilton tickets through them when they were offering 16% off tickets that day). You might luck out.
There are a whole bunch of issues around seat sales. One is that nowadays artists are often given their own block of tickets to sell in lieu of more pay, and if they don’t sell them all they can be put back into general release. There are also seat holdbacks for media and VIPs, and sometimes shenanigans like Ticketmaster being accused of giving scalping sites (which they own) blocks of tickets to scalp at higher prices, then if they don’t sell them they are turned back into ticketmaster and those seats become available.
All this means that if you want good seats, check back often because seats are released to the public at various intervals all the way to showtime. More than once I’ve been pissed off after buying ‘best available’ seats, only to find that a couple of days later even better seats become available.